Zelda series 'cannot go back to button controls'

The future of the Zelda series will stick to motion controls, the Zelda producer has revealed.

The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword wowed critics, including our own Billy Berghammer. However, one of the few marks against it were the motion controls. "Though Nintendo has made great strides in motion tech with the WiiMotion Plus, there were a few times where a required gesture wasn’t accurately tracked," our review noted. "This caused me to make a much more pronounced motion towards the screen, which delivered the desired results despite being slightly more awkward."

While the execution may not have been perfect, it appears Nintendo thinks Skyward Sword represents the future of the series. Zelda producer Eiji Aonuma has gone on record saying that motion is the future for the franchise.

"I honestly think we cannot go back to button controls now," Aonuma told the Official Nintendo Magazine UK. "So I think that these controls will be used in future Zelda titles, too."

Motion controls helped push the direction of Skyward Sword. "One of the main things we've wanted to do with Wii MotionPlus and the motion control in this game was not just to have you battle enemies, but to have each battle itself be a puzzle you had to solve," Aonuma said before the game's release.

The next Zelda game will appear on Wii U. This year's E3 tech demo showed off Wii U's graphical capabilities, but didn't showcase how a Zelda game would be controlled on Nintendo's next generation console.